Boeing will put people on Mars before SpaceX claims CEO Dennis Muilenburg

Elon Musk has grand plans for the human race. Whether his plans will come to life is another matter entirely. Not quite long ago Musk had given out details of his ambitious plans regarding the colonisation of Mars by 2022, which was pretty impressive.

Then about three days ago Musk tweeted that he plans to put his Tesla Roadster supercar into Martian orbit. All pretty cool things to say. But will he deliver on them? Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg thinks not.

CEO of The Boeing Company Dennis Muilenburg. Reuters

Maybe Musk does put humans on the Red Planet, but according to Muilenburg, the first ones to step on Martian soil would arrive there in a Boeing rocket. The report by Arstechnica claims that this is not the first time Muilenburg has made such a statement.

Back in 2016, he made the same exact remark about SpaceX. "I'm convinced that the first person to step foot on Mars will arrive there riding on a Boeing rocket," he said at a Boeing-sponsored tech summit in Chicago, claims the report.

This time, apart from this statement he also claimed on CNBC that, "We’re going to take a first test flight in 2019 and we’re going to do a slingshot mission around the Moon". Elon Musk replied with only two words, "Do it".

Boeing is the prime contractor for NASA's Space Launch System rocket. Now even though Muilenburg has claimed that the rocket will launch in 2019, NASA has admitted that the rocket isn't going anywhere in that year. The maiden launch for the rocket was scheduled in 2017 but the date has now been skipped to December 2019 and NASA claims that it may be further postponed to June 2020, according to the report.

On the other hand, Elon Musk's timeline of 2022 seems a tad bit more realistic. However, both Boeing and SpaceX will require massive government funding if they are to put humans on Mars anytime soon. Let the better team win.